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The life science industry has experienced rapid growth since the pandemic and the demand for life sciences talent continues to grow exponentially. With that increase in demand comes difficulty in finding candidates with the specialized skills required to fill roles. Even though a record number of people are graduating with a life sciences degree (U.S. graduates totaled more than 171,520 in 2021, which is a record and more than double what it was 15 years ago), the life sciences industry had the second lowest unemployment rate out of all U.S. occupations in 2022.
It’s clear that in today’s competitive job market, simply posting a job opening is not enough to attract the top qualified candidates. But by having strong recruitment marketing that promotes your science brand and showcases who you are, what you offer, and how a candidate can thrive in your environment, you can attract quality candidates with the right skills.
Establish Employer Branding
So, how exactly do you capture the attention of premier life science candidates? The first step, and the key to securing top talent, is to establish your employer branding. In fact, 75% of prospective candidates will consider a company’s employer brand before they apply for a job, and 64% of candidates will research a company to determine their online reputation before anything else. Because of this, it’s crucial to have consistent messaging around what your workplace offers in regard to culture, benefits, and opportunities for growth.
For example, Hewlett Packard is a global powerhouse known for its advances in technology. However, HP wanted to improve their reputation as a chemical company, one that hires not only engineers, but also chemists and chemical
engineers.
By creating a campaign that showcased their talent in the chemical space, as well as their resources and culture of innovation, they were able to garner more than 1 million impressions while driving visitors to open positions within the company.
Create an Effective Careers Page
Once you have your employer branding in a good place, it’s important to have a dedicated place to showcase it. The careers page on your website is a perfect spot to direct your audience for insight into the organization and convert them into applicants. Key indicators of a good career page include:
- Easy to navigate
- Candidates can simplistically search for jobs, manage, and check progress of applications
- Applicants can learn about the company culture and expectations – when considering a move, candidates want to know exactly what’s in it for them
On top of all of this, be sure that your careers page is mobile friendly. In a 2020 report by Appcast, mobile job applications actually exceeded desktop applications in 2020 for the first time ever, with 60.7% of applications being submitted through mobile compared to just 39.3% via desktop.
Grab Attention with Engaging Content
What’s all of this effort worth without a comprehensive campaign strategy to effectively reach your target audience? It’s crucial to create engaging content that is going to attract both active and passive jobseekers. Here are some content ideas on how to grab the attention of potential applicants:
- Share life science industry news or promote relevant upcoming events
- Create articles providing career advice
- Tell employee stories! Highlight exactly what a career at that company could look like and satisfy the 66% of candidates that want to hear from employees
For example, ShanghaiTech University created a campaign centered around employee stories to drive more than 80 quality candidate applications.
A custom article in C&EN featured faculty members from around the world who were drawn to ShanghaiTech to do cutting-edge research in the chemical sciences. The article and companion recruitment campaign was able to meet aggressive goals and draw in high-bar candidates despite a competitive marketplace.
To promote the engaging content you create, be proactive and creative in your approach. Use social media channels as a popular and cost-effective channel to showcase what you have to offer, create targeted email campaigns, or even implement an employee referral program to help people discover new job opportunities that they trust.
Finally, as you probably already have recruitment marketing content, consider how you could go back and alter that content to put your culture and offerings at the front and center and be responsive to what jobseekers want. In using the right language and keywords that speak to what the current workforce is seeking in a career shift, you can target top tier candidates through job advertisements, social media posts, and even copywriting on your website’s careers page.
In today’s competitive job market and as the demand for life sciences talent will continue to increase, it’s essential that you develop strong recruitment marketing. Using these tools to showcase your employer brand and highlight what you have to offer to a candidate will enable you to reach and attract quality applicants.
Looking for help with your next recruitment marketing campaign? Visit C&ENJobs or contact us to discuss a custom opportunity.
